Gardner-South Wilmington rejects Sangamon Valley Conference

GARDNER — The head count for Sangamon Valley Conference schools in 2014-15 remains at seven.

At least for now, there will not be an eighth member of the conference. If there is, it will not be Gardner-South Wilmington.

Its school board voted unanimously in Wednesday's meeting to stay in the RVC last Wednesday.

“The athletic director (Shane Tucker), the principal (John Engelman) and myself had a lot of good conversations about the pluses and minuses for both conferences, and we’ve talked to coaches in both conferences, and the recommendation was to stay,” GSW Superintendent Michael Perrott said.

Perrott said the school decided to remain in the River Valley Conference becaue it feels more comfortable with the situaton in which it is currently stationed.

“The RVC is good place to be,” Perrott said. “We can be competitive here. We have a good relationship with the RVC.”

Perrott said the decision to stay put had nothing to do with the Sangamon Valley Conference.

“There was no reason to leave the RVC,” Perrott said. “We were not displeased with benefits of being in the RVC. The SVC is not a bad choice. It was just that the RVC was a good choice.”

Gardner-South Wilmington is currenly in a co-op with Dwight — which recently accepted an invitation to the SVC — in four sports, including football. Therefore, Perrott said the school will be seeing the teams from the SVC on quite a few occasions.

“I would just like to say good luck to the rearranged SVC,” Perrott said. “I’m sure we’ll run into some of those teams in non-conference play.”

Comments

The Paxton Record embraces discussion of both community and world issues. We welcome you to contribute your ideas, opinions and comments, but we ask that you avoid personal attacks, vulgarity and hate speech. we reserve the right to remove any comment at its discretion, and we will block repeat offenders' accounts. To post comments, you must first be a registered user, and your username will appear with any comment you post. Happy posting.